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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26891962">The Classmate</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoyHankins/pseuds/RoyHankins'>RoyHankins</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Avamorphs (Avatar/Animorphs crossover series) [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Animorphs AU, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Crossovers &amp; Fandom Fusions, Family, Gen, POV First Person</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:53:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>14,174</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26891962</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoyHankins/pseuds/RoyHankins</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>My name is Zuko. Ever since my friends and I saw something we shouldn't have, we've become the only line of defense against alien invaders. We still don't know enough about what's really going on though. That started to change when I noticed a classmate acting strangely...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Avamorphs (Avatar/Animorphs crossover series) [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1961986</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Book cover: Zuko, with unkempt black hair covering a scarred eye and dark clothes, morphing into a fire ferret. The blending is pretty good, none of the in-betweens look particularly monstrous.</p><p>Tagline: "They can be anywhere."</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>My name is Zuko. That’s basically all I can tell you about me. Not my age, and definitely not where I live. All of us, my friends and I, we have to keep a lot of the details of our situation vague. Because if the wrong people find out, we’ll all be in trouble.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I’m not just talking about death. I’ve faced death. Stared it down. Born the scars from it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is something worse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There are aliens among us. Apparently in all the nations, but we don’t know that for sure. They’re called Yeerks, grey-green slugs that can crawl inside your ear. If they do, you become a Controller. The alien takes complete control of your body, and pretends to be you.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No one knows they’re here, except for me and a few friends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>How did we find out?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bad luck. We were cutting through a construction yard when a spaceship crashed into it. The alien inside wasn’t a Yeerk, but an Andalite. He told us what was going on, just before he died. He also gave us the power to fight back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;Uh, hello? Earth to Zuko?!&gt; The voice didn’t come to me through the air. It just appeared in my mind. The source of it was a nearby squirrel-mouse, looking straight into my eyes with an intelligence behind them that no normal animal had. &lt;I know telling you not to brood is like telling Katara not to nag me, but can you get your head in the game?&gt;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I should explain. That squirrel-mouse chiding me from one brain to another was Sokka, my best friend. He is not normally a small fuzzy animal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Minutes before Yeerks showed up and annihilated Gee’atsoh, he had us put our hands on a  glowing blue cube. That gave us the ability to morph. Now, we can touch any animal, concentrate, and take some of its DNA. With that, we can turn into a perfect copy of it. While morphed, we can talk in thoughtspeak, but there’s one big catch. If we stay in any morph for more than two hours, we’re stuck that way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Forever.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I glowered at the rodent before realizing that might look kind of odd to anyone who happened to see me in the park, then shifted my attention back into the middle-distance. Unable to thoughtspeak back, since I wasn’t morphed, I just told Sokka through clenched teeth, “Aren’t you supposed to be snooping around?” I got a squeak from him at that, and he dashed off through the grass, quickly climbing up a tree and running out onto a branch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>See, we’re not the only one with weaknesses. The Yeerks can’t stay in their hosts forever. Every three days, they have to leave the way they came and go into something called a Yeerk pool,  where they can absorb the radiation they need to live.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now that it at least kind of looked like Sokka was taking this seriously, I had to look around for my other friend. Which was a bit difficult, considering she was underground at the time. We were all in a park that’s not too far from where Sokka and his sister live with their father. It’s the kind of park that is clearly in desperate need of better funding, with sparse grass and sun-bleached playground equipment. It also happened to have a large, almost conspicuous, statue of Avatar Mira in the center.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was about to take another step forward, when I suddenly heard, &lt;Watch where you’re stepping!!&gt; in my head. Another small animal was right in front of me, this one a baby badger-mole. Or rather, my friend Toph morphed into one. &lt;We’ve got movement! They’re coming out, and I think they’re armed!&gt;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>My eyes widened, and I had to think quickly about what to do. We were in the park because Toph had found an underground Yeerk pool, with the entrance connected to that statue. She’s blind, and can use her earthbending as a sense. It helps her get around, but it’s also pretty useful for finding things certain aliens don’t want us to find. Hence why she, Sokka, and I were there as late afternoon was turning to evening, after a long day at school.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Controllers were about to show up, their strange alien weaponry at the ready, then they knew we were here, somehow. In the weeks since getting our morphing ability, we’d had more than one scuffle with them, though none of them had been as bad as that first terrifying night in the Yeerk pool near the zoo. I felt confident enough I could hold them off until the other two were able to get away, but where we were made that a bit of an issue. My battle morph...isn’t exactly the stealthiest. People would hear about a dragon suddenly appearing in a suburban park.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I’m not the kind of person who yearns for conflict, but something inside me wanted to fight. Ever since I’d learned about the Yeerks, a sense of moral outrage at what they were doing to people wouldn’t leave me. It feels like it’s my duty to stop them. It stung my pride, but I knew what the best call was. I started morphing, not into a dragon, but something else. Namely, the same squirrel-mouse that Sokka had morphed into. I only had three morphs, and between them, the bitter truth was that the tiny rodent was the right one. My perspective shifted quickly as my body lost most of its height, and fur began to cover my body. The second I was able to, I reached out to my friends with thoughtspeak and told them, &lt;We need to go, but without catching anyone’s attention! We’re not turning this into a fight if we can help it.&gt;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I heard a scoff from Toph at that, but no argument from Sokka. I’d just finished morphing, now so small that the blades of grass were as tall as trees, when the smooth grey stone on the back of the statue opened into a concealed passageway, and several people stepped out, some strange metallic object in their hands. I didn’t know what they were called, but I had seen what they could do to the hide of a badger-mole. It...isn’t pretty.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a tense moment, as the two Controllers looked around the park, clearly trying to keep an eye out for any suspicious animals. They almost caught sight of me, as I stood still, flattening my tiny body against the ground, my tiny heart beating loudly in my chest. The setting sun was on my side. “False alarm?” one Controller finally said to another, and they went back into the Yeerk pool.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now that the danger had passed, I felt exhausted. &lt;Want to head our separate ways, talk about this tomorrow?&gt; I asked, and quickly got a set of grunts back. After heading behind a tree, I morphed back into my normal body, wincing at the feeling of my bones resetting themselves into the proper places as they grew.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was lucky that Aang had figured out that we could morph with clothing on, so long as there wasn’t a lot of it and it was tight enough. It meant I wasn’t naked, though the gym clothes from the year before I was wearing were still really uncomfortable as I headed out into the night, ready to get home.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When I opened the front door to my house, quickly taking off my shoes at the entranceway before going inside, my mother didn’t take long to come up to me, giving me a smile that barely concealed her worry. “Zuko, you’re home! I made your favorite for dinner, why don’t we-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not hungry,” I told her, not meeting her eyes as I walked past her, trying to get to my room as quickly as I could. It wasn’t like I was angry at her, but I’d just gone through so much. Two tests, a near-fight with some bullies targeting Aang, and then a brush with Controllers on what I’d hoped was a routine scouting mission. I just didn’t have the mental energy to talk to my mom, or eat food, or do anything I’d normally enjoy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I just laid flat on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. It had been a long time since I was this stressed. Not since my parents started their separation. But I tried not to think about that. Or think about </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Instead, I tried breathing deeply, since I’d heard that was good for clamping down on difficult emotions.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Weirdly enough, my mind went back to that statue. Unlike some of my friends, I’m actually old enough to kind of remember the now deceased Avatar. I was really young, so the memories are pretty spotty, but I can still remember seeing her on television. There was no way I could forget the reaction to her death, especially not in my own home. Even at that age, I think I knew something was wrong.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the statue wasn’t of Avatar Mira, the old venerated warrior and diplomat I’d seen in the media. It was of when she’d been young, maybe around my age. I’m not the best history student, but even I knew what she had to go through, growing up just as the Second Colonial War broke out around her. But she didn’t look troubled or upset on the statue. Instead, the stone face I’d seen looked...happy. Optimistic. It kind of reminded me of someone I knew.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I don’t know exactly when I fell asleep that night, lost in a strange haze of anxiety and exhaustion.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Flip book animation in the corner for the first quarter: Zuko walking across the page, hands in his hoodie's pockets.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I don’t know when the nightmares began.</p><p>It wasn’t like I hadn’t had nightmares before I’d learned about the Yeerks. But as the years away from my father continued on, and the truth that I didn’t have to live with him felt more real, they started spacing themselves out. They hadn’t even been too bad, really. Father yelling at me, Father hitting me, Father burning me.</p><p>I know that sounds bad. I used to think it was too. That was before we joined the fight. Now, I have more restless nights than peaceful ones. My father almost never appears in them, though if he does, he has one of those alien weapons in his hand. And he isn’t alone.</p><p>All day, every day, I try to avoid thinking about our first time attacking a Yeerk Pool. Every nightmare, I relive it against my will. It was supposed to be simple. Go in, get the hostages, get out. But whoever built the Yeerk Pool had thought someone might try that. The cramped quarters put our large battle morphs at a disadvantage. We were lucky we all escaped with our lives. If Aang hadn’t told us their reinforcements were coming in...</p><p>The details of the dream change every time. Usually, they’re inconsequential, like the exact details of some of the Controllers we were fighting. But other times, they’re bigger. Like the half a dozen times where we don’t make it out alive. Where I’m forced to watch my friends, one by one, die, until I’m killed too. Most times aren’t that bad. But even then, I still have to look at the faces of all the people we couldn’t save. As we left the Yeerk Pool behind, I looked back at them, and saw the brief hope in their eyes fade away as they realized we were abandoning them.</p><p>That was the last thing in my mind as I woke up. Only this time, the woman I’d met eyes with hadn’t been some nameless innocent. It had been my mother. Bile rose up in my throat, but I swallowed it down. I tried to stuff my feelings about that nightmare and what it had risen within me deep inside, in a box that would never be opened. I didn’t have time to be breaking down. I had to get ready for school, I had to work with my friends, I had to take things one step at a time.</p><p>What I couldn’t ignore was what else my mother’s face had drudged up. Remembering how I’d treated her the night before, I felt the bottom fall out of my stomach. Why had I acted so coldly? I felt like hitting something, cursing my own idiocy. She’s already been through so much! More than anyone as wonderful as her should ever have suffered. I wouldn’t...I couldn’t add to that. I can’t become my father.</p><p>So after getting dressed, I went downstairs to find my mother had already made breakfast for both of us, as well as prepared lunch for me to take to school. It made me feel even worse. She smiled as I came into the room, looking up from the book she’d been reading, rose up from her seat at the table and came over to give me a hug. Ever since we started living together, just the two of us, she’s been a lot more physically affectionate. It’s almost like she’s trying to make up for my absent father, but she shouldn’t bother. My mother at her worst is preferable to my father at his best.</p><p>I return the hug as best I can, though Sokka has informed me multiple times that my hugs are as stiff and wooden as a scarecrow. My mother didn’t seem to mind though, kissing my forehead before asking, “How did you sleep last night?” I knew it was a normal thing for a mother to ask her child, but I froze for a second anyway, tensing up at just the thought of what horrors had assailed me as I slept. She frowned at whatever expression I’d made, and cupped my face with one hand. “Zuko, you know you can talk to me about anything.”</p><p>My breath hitched in my throat. I’ve wanted to tell my mother about everything that’s been happening ever since the night the spaceship crashed. But I didn’t know how she would take it. There was some kind of alien invasion taking place, one she couldn’t do anything about, and her son was going out to try and stop it, somehow. She’d baby me, I felt confident about that. She might even make me promise to stop. So I’d made my decision, at least for now: she’d have to stay in the dark. Still, I couldn’t look her in the eyes, feeling guilty over what I was hiding from her, and I told her, “I know.” But I took a breath and made the effort to meet her gaze. “I’m sorry for how I treated you last night. You were just trying to look out for me, but I was rude. You do so much for me, and-”</p><p>“Shh...” she said, pulling me in for a tighter hug than before. It was hard not to just start crying into her blouse, like I was a little boy again. “You do just as much for me, Zuko. I forgive you. Now, eat your breakfast. You don’t want to be late for school.” I hadn’t been paying attention to the time, and she was right. Eating the fire flakes as quickly as I could, it wasn’t long before I was saying goodbye to my mother and jogging to school. I was running late enough by that point that I didn’t even run into any friends on the way, at least not until I got into class and took my seat in front of Sokka, minutes before the bell rang.</p><p>When he’s a human, Sokka is...huh. I’ve never had to describe my best friend to someone who’s never met him before. Well, he and his sister Katara are from the Southern Water Tribe. Wait, that’s not really true, they were both born in the city we lived in. But if you go back a couple generations, both sides of their family are from there, except for a few relatives from the Northern Water Tribe.</p><p>A lot of people saw Sokka as the class clown, a reputation he’d developed the first year I met him, when we were in the same kindergarten together. He does enjoy telling jokes, though most of the time he’s the only one who laughs at them. He’s also gotten kind of flirty lately. Before we found out about the invasion, Sokka was spending a lot of his free time chatting up girls at our school. While he might brag about being a ‘lady killer’, as far as I’m aware he’s never gotten as far as a kiss. Which is kind of strange. It’s not like Sokka is unattractive. His traditional Water Tribe hairstyle, shaved on the sides with the center pulled into a hair tie in the back, looks good on him, and he has better fashion sense then I ever will. He’s also got beautiful blue eyes, the color as vivid as a deep lagoon, and an easy confidence that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to match.</p><p>But that’s all surface level stuff. The kind of things most people in our class know about him. What they don’t know is how smart Sokka can be, especially when he starts taking things seriously. He doesn’t brag about it, but he’s one of the top students in our year, and he doesn’t even study very often. There have been a number of tests throughout the years I only passed thanks to his help cramming the night before.</p><p>He’s also dependable. Sokka isn’t as directly confrontational as Katara and I can be, but he still tries to help people he thinks need it. Ever since Aang started really becoming a member of our group of friends, Sokka’s had an eye out for him. He doesn’t draw a lot of attention to it, but the right snarky comment or insult towards people who were looking to hassle our friend does as much to deter them as Katara’s aura of protection or my direct approach.</p><p>We take all the same classes together, and a few periods into the day, during our history class with Professor Zei, I felt the sharp poke of his pencil poke into my back while I was trying to listen to a lecture about Avatar Yangchen. “Much like Avatar Mira, Yangchen was considered a master diplomat, and her guidance helped create one of the most prosperous periods in known history,” Zei explained with excitement, while I tried to ignore Sokka and keep focused on taking notes. Like most professors, Zei preferred to mark historical periods by the Avatar who presided over them.</p><p>Any hopes that I was going to get much out of this lecture ended when I felt the wrath of Sokka’s writing instrument again, this time right between my shoulder blades. Fed up, I looked over my shoulder, trying to give him the best death glare I could. One of the few benefits of my scar, so I’m told, is that it’s easy for me to look very angry. Sokka was unphased, staring at me with a barely hidden smile and a piece of folded paper in his hand. Realizing that the more I resisted, the more fun he’d poke me, I decided to just take the paper. Unfolding it, I knew I’d find a message inside scrawled in Sokka’s rushed, sloppy handwriting. Would it be about last night? Or had he thought of something else we could do against the Yeerks? Expecting something like that, I was mildly disappointed to see all he’d written was, ‘You looked at your girlfriend lately?’</p><p>It was difficult to stifle my groan. Setting my class notes aside, I wrote a response with neat, precise penmanship. ‘You know I don’t have a girlfriend.’ Then I folded it back up and slipped it behind me without looking away from Professor Zei, even if I wasn’t listening to what he was saying any longer. The girl that Sokka was referring to was Jin, someone else we’d been classmates with for years. When we were ten, we’d been assigned as each other’s partners for a science project. She was nice, but I don’t really remember a lot about the time we spent together in the library afterschool. My head wasn’t in a good place in those days.</p><p>When it was over, she’d asked to hang out with me after school. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. It wasn’t until later that I learned she’d meant it to be a date, something Sokka was all too happy to explain to me through his laughter. I let her down gently, letting her know that my father hadn’t allowed me to ‘court’ anyone, and I’d thought she’d taken it well. Jin had been friendly with me ever since, and Sokka still referred to her as ‘Zuko’s girlfriend’, ‘Mrs. Zuko’, and ‘the old ball and chain’ every once and awhile, seemingly just because it got a rise out of me.</p><p>I got my reply pretty quickly. ‘Look at her and tell me what you see’ Deciding to humor Sokka, I tried to look at Jin out of the corner of my eye, trying my best not to draw attention to the fact I was staring at her from across the classroom. She was sitting in the same row as me, but by the opposite wall, next to a window. Normally, on the rare occasions I’d look her way during a class, Jin would be smiling. She reminded me a little of Aang, she just had this quality to her, like it was so hard for anything to get her down. Even when I told her I hadn’t realized it was a date, and that I couldn’t go out with her again, the sadness was only ever in her eyes. In fact, I didn’t think I’d ever seen her frown before.</p><p>But it looked like there was a first time for everything. Jin was looking out the window, but even in profile it was clear her face was drooping into something sorrowful. It just looked...unnatural. It was like if Toph started acting meek and shy, or if Katara started bullying someone. The thing was, there was something relatable to how she looked. I felt like I’d seen something like her expression in the mirror, at my lowest. It was the face of someone who wasn’t in a good situation, and didn’t see any hope of it ever improving. I turned my attention back to my desk and wrote, ‘Why were you looking at her?’ It wasn’t like I was jealous that Sokka was looking over at her, but I was curious as to how he’d noticed something was wrong. Sokka is many things, but savvy to the emotions of those around him is not one of them.</p><p>It wasn’t long before I had the note again. ‘...Katara might have heard through the grapevine that something is up with her, and told me?’ That immediately made a lot more sense. I also knew why he had brought it to me, even if he wouldn’t write it on the paper. Of the five of us, I knew Jin the best. Now that we knew some people were being controlled by alien parasites, watching out for sudden radical changes in behavior or personality were a priority.</p><p>I wrote the last message of our back-and-forth. ‘I’ll talk to her between classes.’ After handing that back to Sokka, I watched him roll the paper we’d been writing on into a ball, then pass it back to me. For a second, I was confused, until he pantomimed around the paper ball with his hands, which I eventually realized was supposed to be me setting it on fire. I scowled. It was a good security measure, but I’d need to wait to do it outdoors.</p><p>Yes, I’m a firebender. I just don’t...do a lot of it. These days. I used to have the best trainers when I was a kid, expensive tutors who’d tried to drill the basics into my head day after day. My progress isn’t what my father would have liked, however, and it wasn’t long before those teachers were focused on my sister instead. I didn’t mind. Firebending is useful, but...it always reminds me of him. Something else he’s tainted for me.</p><p>Once class was over, I waited behind as Sokka headed off to language class. Jin was slow in putting her stuff together, so the room was empty by the time she was heading towards the door. Trying not to look awkward or suspicious, I took a step towards her and asked, “You have Ms. Kwan next too, right? Want to walk to class together?” I don’t know why I asked that first question, I knew for sure we had that class together.</p><p>But it didn’t look like she saw anything strange about the question. More, it looked like she was surprised I was talking to her at all. Her gloomy expression brightened a little, and I swear her cheeks grew just a shade more flushed as she considered what I’d asked. “Sure, that sounds great.” It didn’t take Katara to tell that her tone didn’t match her words, but she walked side by side through the school halls anyway. As we did, I was suddenly aware of how this might look to the others we passed by, and I could tell they were looking. Jin is...pretty. Very pretty. She ties her long brown hair into two braids that sit on each of her shoulders, and frame her face beautifully. She is also, uh, well, for a few years now she has been really noticeable to a lot of the other guys in our year, and some of the girls too. Which was part of why I was doing my best to look at her face and not her low-cut green blouse. I was searching for something to say, when she jumped in and went first. “So, how are things with your parents going?”</p><p>“They’re divorced now.” The words were out of my mouth before I knew what I was doing, and I could see her visibly flinch at how harsh my voice must have sounded as I said them. I took a breath, and tried to remember it had been an innocent question. She must have remembered my talking a little about mother and father years ago, and had no clue about anything that had happened since. Trying my best to recover the conversation, I asked her, “What about you? Are your parents doing well?”</p><p>It looked like I’d stepped in it once again. Something changed about her face as I asked that, a moment of something like suspicion, then fear, before her face settled into a gloomy stoic mask. The same kind I’d worn a lot throughout the years, when I was trying to hide the things tearing me apart. “They’re fine,” she said, her voice empty enough that I was damn sure they were anything but. We reached our classroom and entered it without another word. That was probably for the best. Now, I really didn’t know if I was really talking to Jin, or to a Yeerk inside her head.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>If you're wondering if the light Sokka thirst in Zuko's narration was intentional, it was. I don't know for sure if I'll go fully down that route, but I would be committing a genuine crime to Avatar and Animorphs if my fusion didn't have at least a little queerness to it.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Flip book animation in the corner for the second quarter: While Zuko is walking, he started to shrink into his clothes as he morphs.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>After we decided to use morphing to fight the Yeerks, we had to talk about where we’d be meeting up. We didn’t want to be at each other’s houses after school all the time, it could look suspicious to anyone looking at us closely. Plus, as Sokka pointed out, it didn’t include the one time we’d all be able to talk together while looking completely normal: lunch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The others started looking around our school for some place we could eat without anyone else hanging around, but I knew right away it wouldn’t work. I know all too well that the second there’s a hidden area that no one uses during lunch, someone will notice and take it. I didn’t tell the others that. It would be better for them to realize it themselves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Two useless lunch periods later, I told everyone else my idea. Trying to find some hidden alcove wouldn’t work. The more we tried to hide, the worse it would be if someone started to suspect what we were up to. So instead, we started eating lunch in the quad, saving one table just for the five of us. It meant we couldn’t talk openly about the Yeerks, but we could use enough subtlety that no one overhearing would know what we meant.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That day I was the last one to get to the table. Sokka’s sister, Katara, had made her and her brother’s lunches, which looked to be leftovers from some seaweed noodle dish, which Katara had probably cooked as well. Sokka might complain about his little sister’s mothering, but never when it meant food in his mouth. Her and Sokka’s mouths were full as I approached, but I still got a wave with one hand from her. A lot of the guys in my class can’t keep their eyes off Katara, Aang included, but to me she’s my best friend’s baby sister. Still, I could recognize that in her comfy blue sweatshirt, she had a down-to-earth warmth that probably helped draw in her admirers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sitting on Katara’s other side was Aang. As was usual, he didn’t have any food with him. I had started a tradition of sharing at least part of my lunch with him, something a few of the others joined in on nearly every day. It looked like it was starting to do something, as Aang’s sunken cheeks started to fill out more, and his cheery attitude somehow grew even brighter. Still, he was thin as a rail, and both his beige t-shirt and earthy brown cargo shorts looked several sizes too large on him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Toph looked as though she’d already finished whatever her family’s cooks had made for her. The smallest of our group, Toph was the only person in the world who rivaled Sokka for being my closest friend. A few years younger than me, our friendship was more than a little forced. Her parents and mine had known each other for a long time, more for what they could offer each other in business than any personal attachment. Still, that meant Toph and I were frequently put in a room together, away from the busy adults. Well, us and Azula.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s the most stubborn person I know, with absolutely zero interest in kowtowing to the whims of anyone. That means that she’s also stuck up for me when no one else would, and listened to whatever I’ve had to say when I’ve been at my lowest. I honestly don’t want to think about what I would have been like if I hadn’t had Toph’s steadying influence on my life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Perhaps because of her blindness, Toph tended to dress without really caring if what she was wearing worked together or not. She also avoided wearing the kinds of expensive clothes her parents usually bought for her. That particular day, she had donned an old shirt of mine, a red one with my dad’s company logo on the front, tied up at the bottom to make it fit her better. Combined with her black pants, it almost gave her a Fire Nation-esque color scheme.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once I’d taken my place next to Toph, pulling out the lunch my mother had made for me to eat while we talked, Toph spoke up. “Sokka was just tellin’ us about the whole Jin thing. How’d it go?” When we talk in the open like this, most of us sound a bit nervous, working carefully not to say the wrong thing. All of us except Toph, who always sounds like she has no fear about what anyone could overhear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ever since Jin and I had shared our few words in the hallway, I’d thought about them over and over in my head. About how to interpret them, how to explain them to the others, and what we could do about them. That’s probably why I sounded more prepared than I felt when I told them, “Something is definitely going on. Her personality is completely different, and she didn’t want to even start to broach the subject of her parents.” I paused, making sure I stopped my overview there. I could see in my friends’ stares they knew what I was leaving unsaid. We all knew this could mean she’d been infested by a Yeerk. “Still, I don’t know if I’m worrying too much. Maybe her parents are going through a rough patch.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It feels like such a haze nowadays, but I have to wonder what I was like when my parents were divorcing. It probably wasn’t the normal reaction. After all, I’d felt abandoned by my father years before that. Most of my stress didn’t come from conflict between my parents, but the question of who got to keep who. When the agreement was finally hashed out, and I heard I’d be living with my mother, it felt like the only happiness I’d had in years.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It looked like Aang agreed with me what I’d said about Jin. “‘The weight of one’s problems only grows with time, and can burden even the most steady of shoulders.’ She might just have some tough things going on right now.” I wasn’t the only one who was surprised to hear that coming from Aang’s mouth. Realizing everyone was staring at him, Aang gave us a big goofy grin while he ran a hand through his shaggy brown hair. “That’s just some Air Nomad saying I read a while back.” That did add up, I knew that Aang was interested in the culture he had birth ties to, but had never seen first-hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But as was expected, Sokka jumped in to give a different opinion. Mouth still half-full with Katara’s noodles, he said, “You don’t know her like we do, Aang. She’s been in the same class as us since grade school, and I’ve never seen her frown before now. Either someone killed her pet fire ferret in front of her, or something a whole lot worse is going on.” At a scowl from his sister, Sokka finally swallowed his food. “We should do something.” I was a little surprised to hear him saying that. When it came to fighting the Yeerks, Sokka had been the most cautious out of all of us. But, I supposed, this wasn’t about some nameless people we knew nothing about. Even if we weren’t close friends to Jin, Sokka knew her, and if something was wrong, he wanted to help.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Looking bored at what we were talking about, Toph chimed in. “We already did something. Grumpy Gus over here talked to her, and he says it could be nothing. Unless you want to start investigating every student who goes through a mood swing, I say we leave her alone.” Toph’s answer was exactly what I expected from her. She might act crass, but Toph has a good head on her shoulders. When she says we should do nothing, it’s because she’s thought it through and thinks it’s the best idea. Which also means it’s near-impossible to change her mind, especially once she’s said it out loud.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were talking back and forth after that. Katara and Aang put in their thoughts every once in a while, but the argument was largely fueled by Sokka and Toph. Meanwhile, I was busy thinking it all over for myself. They both made good points. But every time I thought that maybe we should just drop it, I’d remember how Jin looked right before she walked away. Either she was a Controller, or she had something really bad going on in her life. Either way, I wanted to help her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was right around then I decided on that course direction when I noticed no one else was talking. They were all looking at me, expectantly. “What?” I said, my voice a little harsher than I might have wished it had sounded. I have issues with sudden, unexpected attention being put on me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sokka looked annoyed I had asked that. “Someone find the Avatar, Zuko’s mind is trapped in the Spirit World,” he joked. “Boss, we’re looking for final judgement. Aang and I want to look into this, the girls want to back off.” A few nods added to what he said, making it clear they were all wanting to hear my final say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It clearly wasn’t about breaking a tie. This wasn’t the vote we’d had in my bedroom, hours before we’d gone to break into the zoo to get our battle morphs. Sokka didn’t call me ‘Boss’ as a joking nickname, he said it casually. They were all looking at me, I realized in that moment, like I was in charge.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That thought lit something dark in me. A roaming itch started traveling over my body, irritating my senses. I felt like I couldn’t breathe in enough to satisfy my lungs, which suddenly craved oxygen. I’m sure my face was flushed, my body was overheating beyond belief. I knew almost immediately what the problem was. I was having an anxiety attack.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t my first one, not by a longshot. Despite being hyperaware in the moment of how other people saw me, in retrospect I’m sure no one noticed. I’d gotten pretty good at hiding the signs, and the inexpressive side of my face, covered in rough scar tissue, helped. I took control of my breathing, and went through some mental exercises to remind myself that I was okay, that I wasn’t in danger, that </span>
  <em>
    <span>he</span>
  </em>
  <span> wasn’t there and couldn’t hurt me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As I started to feel the symptoms fade away a little, enough that I could start really thinking properly again, I knew right away what had caused the attack. Before that moment, I hadn’t noticed it, but as I looked back at what had happened since the spaceship crashed, I knew it had been there all along. They all looked at me to lead them. They wanted to know what I thought, because they’d hold to it either way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was terrifying. </span>
  <b>
    <em>You’re not a leader,</em>
  </b>
  <span> a voice whispered in my head, baritone and full of fiery malice. </span>
  <b>
    <em>You never will be. Only the strong are fit to lead, and you are weak.</em>
  </b>
  <span> As much as I hated to hear those words again, and as much as I hated the one who’d said them to me, a large part of me believed them. I was weak. I’d make a terrible leader. ‘If I lead them, we’re all going to die,’ I thought to myself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was anger in there, too. What, had they all decided this without asking me first? The urge to firebend was getting strong, but I pushed it down. Letting out a breath I’d been holding, small motes of fire flaring up as I did so, I gave them my answer. “Let’s just forget it. And don’t call me ‘Boss’.” Then, I grabbed what was left of my lunch, rose from the table, and walked away. It was time to find one of my favorite niches and brood there by myself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I wasn’t going to leave this whole Jin thing alone. Angry at being considered my friend’s leader or no, I was still concerned for her. But if I told them that, they’d insist on making it a big mission, and just considering that made me remember what happened in the Yeerk Pool. I didn’t want to smell one of my friends’ burning flesh ever again. So, I started to plan how to look in on Jin’s home life on my own. After all, I was pretty good at taking care of myself.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I'm finding writing Zuko comes a little more naturally than Aang, but please let me know if/where you think I got his voice wrong.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Flip book animation in the corner for the next quarter of the book: A fire ferret crawls out of Zuko's clothes.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>I told my friends that I’d be going home without them, that my mother needed my help. None of them looked suspicious of me, and Sokka even asked me to tell her that he’d said ‘Hi.’ Something in my chest felt tight as I walked away from them, faking the way to my home while I waited for them to be out of sight. I didn’t like lying to them. But I felt like I needed to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>My plan, if you can really call it one, was simple. Step one was to acquire the DNA of Jin’s pet fire ferret, Shushi. The fluffy animal had been a present for her birthday, about four or five years ago, and she’d snuck it into school more than once to show it off to people.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Actually coming into contact with the ferret, I realized quickly, was not as simple as I’d first thought. As it turned out, the real first step was finding Jin’s house. I vaguely remembered where she’d lived from when we worked on the group project together. But that was a while ago, and I had to check half a dozen houses once I thought I was in the right area. I actually saw Jin walking into a front door, and as far as I could tell she didn’t see me as I rounded the corner onto that street.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now that I knew where I had to go, I needed to find out how to get what I needed. Sneaking into their fenced yard wasn’t difficult. They had no security system, and even before I became a freedom fighter I had dabbled into sneaking into places I didn’t belong. Avoiding any obvious lines of sight from the house, I carefully moved to the window I was pretty sure was for Jin’s bedroom. Then, hoping if she was in there she wouldn’t see me, I looked in to see if Shushi was there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I will not lie to you, I was lucky. Not only was Jin nowhere to be seen, but her pet was inches away from the window. Opening it wasn’t too difficult, she hadn’t locked it and there was no screen, so from there I just needed to acquire Shushi.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A lot of things related to morphing can feel impossible to really explain to those who can’t morph. Acquiring DNA is one of those things. Once you’ve done it a few times, turning it on comes naturally, like flexing a muscle. The animal goes still under your touch. Not like it freezes in fear, but so completely and utterly entranced that you can barely hear it breathe. You just know when the DNA has been acquired, at which point the second you take your hand away, you’ll only have a few seconds before the animal wakes up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That meant I needed to plan ahead for step two: replace Shushi. Unlike acquiring a dragon, I didn’t have to worry about being mauled or burned to death if I couldn’t get away fast enough. The worst I might have suffered was a scratch. Still, I didn’t want to scare him away. After all, it wouldn’t do me any good to morph into Shushi and get inside if he was still in there himself. Then, Jin would walk into her room and freak out about the extra animal in her room.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As I stood there, reaching out to touch the fire ferret, I felt a strong itch on my back all of a sudden. It was hard not to give in to the impulse to pull my hand away to swat at my clothes, but I controlled myself. Taking long, deep breathes like my uncle Iroh once taught me, I figured out what I was going to have to do. Once I’d acquired his DNA, and keeping my hand on Shushi, I grabbed him by what felt like the skin around his neck, hoping it stretched in the same way a cat’s did. There was no such luck there, but the ferret was still in a deep enough trance that it didn’t freak out as I lifted it out of the window. I carefully set the striped animal on the ground, then took my hand off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Before he could recover and realize he was suddenly outside, I climbed into the window and shut it behind me. I barely made it in time, as seconds later I heard the sound of tiny paws scratching at the window, trying to get back inside. For a moment, I worried the sound would give away my mission, but then it stopped, and I watched as Shushi scampered off into the yard.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I let out a breath I didn’t even realize I’d been holding, then started to morph. I’d changed out of my regular clothes and into the tight clothes we’d begun to call our morphing outfits on the way to Jin’s house, so I didn’t need to worry about leaving a pile of teenage boy’s clothes in her bedroom for her to find later.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first thing to change were my eyes. Nearly every animal on the planet has different vision than we do. Sometimes it’s sharper, sometimes it’s fuzzier, sometimes there are more colors, sometimes there are less. The entire room, which I hadn’t really bothered to pay much attention to before, blurred into indistinctness. What I was pretty sure was a dresser now looked like one big blob of brown, even though it was only four or five feet away from me. I held my hand in front of my face, and I could see as it sharpened into focus as I looked at it, the only thing in the room I could see well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That gave me a good vantage point to watch as my hands changed. I felt my bones popping and cracking into new shapes, even though the morphing process didn’t come with any pain. My hand deformed into something in the shape of a ferret’s paw, but it was still hairless and I had fingers instead of claws</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I didn’t have a lot of time to focus on that, however, as I felt my entire torso start to change. I fell to the ground as something started happening to my spine, my body growing longer but also smaller around. Still, I was the same size as usual, and I realized with a start how loud it had sounded when I hit the floor. Someone was going to come check what was going on, and when they did they’d find me in this horrifying state.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Trying to will the morph to continue faster, I suddenly felt fur growing all over my body. Like the real Shushi, it was auburn and black and white in a distinct pattern, the kind that was unique to an individual fire ferret. Only now, thanks to morphing, Shushi and I would be two of a kind. I’d wanted a fire ferret so badly as a kid, I remembered out of nowhere, but my father hadn’t let me have one. Told me I’d probably kill it within a week through my weakness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I shook my head, wondering why I was thinking about something like that. I had to finish this morph, before anyone showed up. I felt something changing with my head, happening rapidly, but I had no way of seeing what was going on. Still, I could feel my nose shrinking as my mouth became a muzzle, my teeth sharpening into something more suited for a creature used to hunting prey, and my ears were moving and altering their shape by the second.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was getting closer to becoming a fire ferret, but I still wasn’t far enough, I was still the same size! Then, just as I felt the tail extending out of my lower back and growing long bushy fur to cover it, the world finally started to grow. Smaller and smaller I became, leaving the room around me to become even more vague in my poor vision as it all moved even farther away in my perspective.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jin? Are you in there? I could have sworn I just saw you head to the bathroom.” The voice was unfamiliar, but my new ears picked it up with perfect clarity. The fact whoever was speaking was on the other side of the door didn’t seem to matter, nor the fact that I could tell the last thing they said was muttered under the person’s breath. I looked myself over, and let out a ferrety wheeze of relief. I looked like a fire ferret from tail to muzzle, the morph had finished. Now, I had two hours to figure out what was going on. “I’m coming in!” the person on the other side of the door announced, before opening it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That had been my first time seeing a door open when I was an animal no more than a foot tall. If you ever wonder why sometimes pets seem scared of us, I should tell you that as someone who has been in their shoes, or, uh, claws, that people are terrifying. The door opening filled my mind with sudden fear, and I couldn’t ever tell if that was the ferret instincts talking. From my perspective, it looked so enormous and it moved so fast, like an inescapable avalanche.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then, the person on the other side appeared. I have been in a zoo habitat with a dragon, but that didn’t really compare to the scale against the person looking down at me. Imagine looking at something four or five times your height, over twenty feet tall, and knowing it could end your life by complete accident.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whoever it was, they were far enough away that their body was out of focus, mostly just a bunch of indistinct blobs of color. I could see the brown of their hair, the blue of their jeans, and the greenish yellow of whatever they were wearing over their chest. “Just the damn ferret...” They were trying to mutter that, their voice a rough baritone, but I heard it sharply regardless. The person who I was starting to think was Jin’s father went to walk out, closing the door behind him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For once, my animal instincts came in handy. I didn’t want to be stuck in this room by myself, it would spoil the whole point of the mission. Neither did the fire ferret. It saw the closing door and realized its chance to explore outside the room was going away. Faster than I could have reacted normally, my limbs flurried into motion as I scampered across the hardwood floor, rushing towards my disappearing chance at freedom.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I barely made it in time. Just before the door closed, the last of my long, fluffy tail made it through, and I watched as Jin’s father walked away down the hall, unaware I’d managed to get out. Now my ferret instincts were screaming at me to run around, be curious, try to open cabinets, but I shut it out as best I could. Those things would get me caught.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I took one step forward, and clearly heard the sound of the claws under my paws make a small </span>
  <em>
    <span>clack</span>
  </em>
  <span>ing sound on the floor. I fought the urge to scream, or rather, yowl. I had been lucky leaving the room that Jin’s father hadn’t heard my movement. I couldn’t rely on that kind of luck. So, in addition to hiding whenever I thought I might be seen, I needed to obfuscate my sound as well. Luckily for me, they had carpets throughout the house. I tested a paw on the nearest one, and realized I was safe that way. The only problem there was that they were all in the middle of the hallway, leaving me exposed while I was on one. This would be tricky.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Moving down the hallway, doing my best to pay attention to the sounds around me, I was able to pinpoint an area of conversation. I headed towards it, hoping it wouldn’t be a mistake, and soon I was in the family’s living room, hiding behind a piece of furniture to eavesdrop. From the voices I could hear, Jin’s father and mother were in the room, but Jin herself wasn’t. “What was the noise?” asked someone I presumed to be Jin’s mother. There was something odd about her voice, though. At the time, I couldn’t really pin down exactly what that was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The girl’s animal,” was the reply given. “It must have knocked something over.” It was around then that I realized what the problem was. It almost sounded like they had an accent to their words, but not one I could place from any person I’d ever met before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>My suspicion grew when Jin’s mother asked, “Did you ask her to give it to a friend or donate it to a shelter?” There was an undertone to the question, something sharp under the words that would surely affect the answer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jin’s father paused before speaking, and when he did, he sounded nervous, accent or no. “I...did. She began crying, again, so I tactically retreated.” Then there was a longer pause, and with no small amount of fear in his voice, her father asked, “The animal seems to give her some measure of comfort. Perhaps we can allow her to keep it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The response was swift. “No. You remember the Visser’s order. No animals are to be kept in our homes. We face an enemy with morphing abilities.” My heart started beating like a dream in my tiny chest. They knew we could morph. And this ‘Visser’, whoever they were, was adapting ahead of us. I couldn’t avoid the truth, now. These people were Controllers. That accent I had noticed? It’s hard for human ears to pick up, but it’s a side effect a lot of them have, something about their difficulties utilizing mouths. According to Suki, it’s most common among younger Yeerks. Who’s Suki? We’ll tell you more about her some other time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A new voice entered the picture, matched to the sound of footsteps I heard enter the room through the same hallway I’d used. “Hey.” It was Jin’s voice. On the surface, it sounded a bit more like her normal self. But I could still hear the undertones of something darker under it. “What are you two up to?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Jin’s mother spoke, her tone was completely different as well. “Oh, hello Jin! Your father and I were just discussing Shushi. While you were in the shower, it sounded like he might have hurt himself in your room, so your father went to check on him.” Before Jin had come into the room, Jin’s mother had sounded like a stern teacher, or maybe someone’s boss. But now that Jin was there, it was obvious she was trying to sound more warm and kind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, I’m sorry,” was Jin’s immediate response. “I don’t want him to be a bother...” She wasn’t trying to hide her sadness anymore. Jin sounded like she was on the brink of crying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quickly, her father replied, “Oh, don’t worry sweetie, he’s not a bother! We just wanted to make sure he didn’t hurt himself, and he looked fine to me!” He sounded like someone rushing to fix a mistake they’d made, but the warmer tone he was affecting sounded more genuine than Jin’s mother’s had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Suddenly, I felt a sharp itch somewhere on my back. Without rational thought coming into the matter at all, I suddenly bent around with surprisingly flexibility, bringing my face up to the spot in question as I started biting the area over and over again, scraping my teeth against the skin under my fur. The itching stopped, so it seemed to have worked, but the sudden motion caused me to bump into the wall, making a loud </span>
  <em>
    <span>thump</span>
  </em>
  <span> in the process. A felt a hand suddenly wrap around my torso, and I was pulled off of the ground and into the air, my legs all dangling under me uselessly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>My first, very human, reaction to being picked up by enormous hands was fear, mixed with no small part of anger at the helplessness that ensued. But that was washed away by my ferret instincts. Those were flooding my brain with happiness, I felt so glad that I was being held. It didn’t make sense in the moment, but I realized later that fire ferrets have been domesticated over hundreds, if not thousands of years. It makes sense that they’ve evolved to embrace contact like that, rather than shying away from it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I found myself curling into Jin’s arms, though I soon became confused as to what I was being rubbed against. It was white and course, but clearly not clothing. Then I remembered what her father had said, about her being in the shower. Which meant this was a bath towel, probably the only thing she had on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You might imagine that, as a teenage boy, being held by a nearly naked girl my age would have fostered certain...feelings in me? But if you are thinking that, you have clearly never been on a life-or-death stealth mission in your life. There is no room in your head for those, uh, kind of thoughts. Sure, maybe later on I blushed thinking about it, but my mind was rushing, trying to ignore the placid animal feelings in me, attempting to put together what I was seeing and hearing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jin’s parents were obviously Controllers. But when she was around, they dropped that and pretended to be normal. Which probably meant...that she wasn’t a Controller too. They even talked about wanting to make her get rid of Shushi, something she’d resisted. But as I was thinking through that, Jin told her parents, “I’m going to my room,” and started walking down the hallway before they could respond.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She set me onto her bed, which felt softer and more comfortable than any bed I’d ever been on before. Jin took her towel off and started putting on clothes, but I couldn’t have seen anything if I’d wanted to, she was far enough away that her whole body was a skin tone blur. Still, I resolved in that moment to never speak a word about this to Sokka, he would never let me forget it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whatever clothes she put on were green, but other than that I had no clue what they were. She approached the bed and laid on it near me. I could hear that she was close to sobbing. “Why are they like this?” she asked, her voice a whisper. “Shushi, what happened to them? They try to pretend things are normal, but...” Then the sobbing started, and my heart broke.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She definitely wasn’t a Controller, then. Instead, she was forced to live with two of them, aware the entire time that any kindness they showed her felt false, that there was something they were hiding from her. It reminded me starkly of some of the worst years of my childhood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even as a child, I knew it wasn’t normal. The tension every time my parents were in the same room with each other. The fear that any wrong word could have disastrous consequences. Long before my father showed me his displeasure directly, I was able to </span>
  <b>feel</b>
  <span> that my family was a lie. Going over to Sokka and Katara’s house, getting to see the love and compassion between their parents, just made the contrast all the worse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was me, not the animal, that walked up to Jin and rubbed my furry body up to her arm, giving her ample opportunity to pet me. The sobbing slowed down, and in just a few minutes the petting stopped. She was asleep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the door was open.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As quietly as I could, I got back down the floor and headed back to the living room. I barely had time to hide behind the same cabinet as before just as Jin’s mother started walking down the hallway, heading towards Jin’s room. Across the living room, her father was heading to a door that I thought headed outside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were splitting up, which meant I had to choose: chase after her mother, or her father. Remembering the dynamic I’d seen in the living room, I chose the former. I was careful to stay as far back as I could from Jin’s mother as they walked, very aware of what they might do to me if they caught me. The Controllers suspected they had enemies who could morph, so any suspicious animal could easily be executed. They’d probably just tell Jin I’d been hit by a satomobile or something.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They approached Jin’s room, looking through the crack at Jin sleeping. Then, they closed the door. I followed as they headed deeper into the house, and barely managed to get into the room they were entering before the door closed in my face. Judging by the large, brown blobs on the walls and the square blobs in the middle of the room, I figured this had to be a study or an office.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With a sharp </span>
  <em>
    <span>click</span>
  </em>
  <span>, they locked the door behind her. I was now trapped in the room with Jin’s mother. They moved over to what I was pretty sure was a table, sitting down before taking a deep breath, like they were steadying themselves for something difficult. I could barely see what looked like some sort of computer set up at the table, and thought they might access that. Instead, their hands went to fiddle with something I couldn’t see, but the effect was immediate.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Standing on the other side of the table, there was now a second person in the room. Except, they weren’t really there. There was an image there, and I was about to hear them speak, but my ferret senses were pretty clear that there was nothing actually there. I’d later learn that this was a hologram, a way of projecting light at a distance, like a three-dimensional video. “Sinnon 246, report.” There was clear authority in the tinny sounding voice that came from the figure made of light, though there was something vaguely familiar about it as well. I felt weirdly confident that if I heard it more clearly, in person, I’d be able to place it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jin’s mother was standing with their back straight, eyes at attention, and responded quickly, “Yes, Subvisser 8, as you command.” I took a few mental notes. Whoever this was, they seemed to be some sort of commanding officer. They mentioned a Visser before, so I wondered if that was a title as well. After all, Subvisser 8 didn’t sound like a name. Then again, I thought, they were aliens, so I couldn’t completely rule that out. “We have been putting as many hours into the project you requested as we can, but neither of us are researchers, and the subject matter you’re interested in is quite...esoteric.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was not the right thing to say. “</span>
  <b>
    <em>Esoteric</em>
  </b>
  <span>?” The Subvisser asked, their voice burning with rage. “Sinnon, do I need to remind you of my position? If that is the case, please let me know. I’d be happy to come by and see your </span>
  <em>
    <span>family</span>
  </em>
  <span>. I’m sure some fresh burn scars on your host’s body or a smoldering house fire should remind you who is in command here.” I could see the seated Controller shudder at the threat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So, this Yeerk was inside a firebender? “Subvisser, my apologies, I spoke out of turn,” Sinnon 246, the Yeerk living inside Jin’s mother, replied, submission dripping from every word she spoke. “We will of course spend as much time as is needed, and without complaint. I did recently find that...” Their words trailed off as Sinnon noticed that the hologram wasn’t facing them any longer, but turned around. Towards me. “Subvisser?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What is that creature doing here?!” Subvisser 8’s voice came out like a vulture lion’s roar, and my entire body froze in fear. I’d been caught. “Visser One’s order was clear: all household animals are to be disposed of, by any means necessary!!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I wasn’t the only one scared. Sinnon rose from their seat, their stolen body shaking, and responded, “Oh, uh, yes, this is my host’s daughter’s pet, and we’ve been trying to-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Before they could finish the sentence, the Subvisser screamed, “Kill it now, or it’s Kandrona Starvation for you and your subordinate!!” Even with my poor vision, I could still clearly see as Sinnon stopped Jin’s mother’s body from shaking in fear, steadying itself for what they had to do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Which was, of course, to end my life.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Wow, I wrote this faster than normal. Just in a mood to write more of this thanks to the Animorph Graphic Novel, I think. Which is great, by the way, read it if you haven't.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Morphing changes your life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There are so many things that are impossible, until you can morph.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Have you ever seen someone trying to catch an animal, so they can kill it? I have. When I was four years old, I brought a turtle duck home from the park with me. My father didn’t like that. I was forced to watch as he chased it through my home, powerless as I knew he was ready to end its life. Only my mother’s pleading stopped him. Instead, father was convinced to leave it outside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I’d been so sad for the poor animal, and for weeks I had nightmares about being chased by my father with murder in his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the office of Jin’s home, as the Yeerk operating inside her mother’s body came towards me, I was able to see what it was like, from the animal’s point of view.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Luckily for me, my animal instincts shoved their way into the front of my mind, and I wasn’t scared in the slightest. I stood my ground, hissing at the Controller coming to kill me with their stolen hands. The human part of me registered, blandly, that the face looking down at me seemed mournful. “I’m sorry,” they whispered, too quiet for the hologram to hear. Whether that was Sinnon or Jin’s mother, I don’t know.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I tried to dart away as they leaned down to grab me. It was pointless. I felt her hands rap around my midsection, though they seemed to be careful not to squeeze me too hard. Being picked up by a giant wasn’t something my fire ferret instincts appreciated, and I tried twisting out of her hands. I couldn’t escape her grip.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So I did the next best thing. Bending my long body as far as I could, I sunk my teeth into her hands, her wrists, her arms. Anywhere I could bite into her flesh, I did. Their skin tasted disgusting, but I tried not to focus on what it was like to bite a person as hard as I could, I just kept attacking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sinnon didn’t look too upset about killing me anymore, and my assault hadn’t gotten them to drop me. I stopped, drooping in their hands as though I’d given up. “I have the anima-” they began to say, but I tried one last trick. This time, I let </span>
  <b>my</b>
  <span> mind choose the target, aiming for something tactical, not biting at random. I wedged my muzzle into the nearest hand and bit into the flesh between thumb and forefinger as hard as I possibly could.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For the first time, I drew blood, and quite a bit of it. The Controller cursed, and they instinctively recoiled from the pain, giving me the room to slip out from their fingers. I landed on the floor and took off as fast as I could. The door was still closed, so I settled for trying to head under some furniture, for cover. “Are you this incompetent, that you cannot catch and kill a small mammal?!” Subvisser 8 roared, clearly unhappy with their underling’s failure so far.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I’d managed to get under a bookshelf, though doing so squeezed my tiny body so flat that it hampered my mobility. I’d be able to get out again, but not quickly. Still, I’d hoped that I was finally safe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is no ordinary animal, Subvisser. I believe I’ve captured one of the insurgents.” As the Controller said those words, a deadly calm in their voice, I heard something else as well...the telltale sound of one of their advanced alien weapons turning on. If I was hit with that while morphed into a fire ferret, I would be dead. End of story.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>My small heart was beating quickly in my furry body. This was bad. It was very, very bad. I should’ve asked for help, I shouldn’t have come in alone. My stupid pride had gotten me killed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice in my head. &lt;Wow, looks like you </span>
  <b>really</b>
  <span> messed this mission up, huh Zuko?&gt;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;Sokka?&gt; I thought back, trying to precisely direct the thoughtspeak to the same place I’d heard it. But it was strange, it felt like...it was coming from my fur. Emotions were whirling inside me faster than I could take proper stock of them. Relief, fear, anger, dread...I decided to settle on anger. It was an old friend, unfortunately. &lt;Sokka, where are you? What are you doing here?&gt;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I got a mental laugh back at that, as I heard the Controller stomping closer to the bookshelf I was hiding under. They cursed under their breath, as they tried to figure out the best way to kill me. Perhaps they didn’t want to destroy the bookshelf if they could avoid it? &lt;Where? I’m just riding your coattails, buddy. As usual. Only this time, I’m doing it as a spider-tick.&gt; The itching! But then, I thought, hadn’t that started before I’d even morphed? &lt;As for </span>
  <b>what</b>
  <span> I’m doing, I thought that was pretty obvious. I’m saving your butt! I’ll explain more later, but right now we need to get out of here.&gt;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>From the way Sinnon was grunting, they were going through the effort of trying to move the bookshelf. Good, I thought. With all the books on here, that would be easier said than done. &lt;If you morphed before I did, then we’re coming up on an hour, maybe an hour and a half on our morphs. How are we getting out?&gt; Being stuck as a fire ferret wasn’t the worst thing I could imagine, but a spider-tick? I shudder at the thought of that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;Tap the floor with your paw twice, then three times, then once.&gt; I started to realize what this was, as I did as he told me. It was an old trick, one he and I had developed with the help of another friend years ago.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After all, it was easy to send messages through the floor when you had a friend who can sense vibrations. &lt;Finally!&gt; came Toph’s voice, and my sharp ferret ears could hear her tunneling into the hardwood floor, working her way through it as fast as she could. &lt;Any longer, and I was going to leave you both and head home.&gt;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The relief I felt at knowing that Sokka </span>
  <b>and</b>
  <span> Toph were there, that they’d come to help, was inescapable. If I’d had a human face, I would have been smiling. &lt;No, you weren’t.&gt; I told her, and she didn’t contest it. Finally Toph broke through, and I attempted to squeeze into the hole she’d made.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The only problem there was that I was quite a bit bigger around than the opening. Rather than waste time having Toph widen it, I just ignored the pain signals and kept pushing. I felt fur rip, and flesh tear, but I was making it through. &lt;Hey, watch it!&gt; Sokka complained. &lt;I barely kept attached to you, jerk!&gt;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All that was left of me up top was my tail, but as I started to fall into Toph’s hole, I felt a hand grab it. They tugged, and must have felt that I was stuck. So, they pulled harder. The thought of being pulled back through the other way, and how painful that would be, made me so scared I started squeaking with my ferret mouth, scrambling to hold onto the earth walls around me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;Geese, you don’t gotta cry about it,&gt; Toph said, and I could imagine she was rolling her eyes, blind or not. &lt;Here, I’ll help.&gt; I felt her badger-mole paws grab onto mine, and she pulled me down as hard as she can, against the upward force the Controller exerted on me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If they’d had a better grip, I’d be dead now. But fire ferret tails are mostly fur, and mine slipped out from their fingers as I completely fell into the hole. I heard shouting from above us, but we didn’t stay to hear what the punishment from Subvisser 8 would be. We ran.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Toph’s tunnel wasn’t hard to maneuver in, fire ferrets are great climbers, but the darkness was a bit of an issue. Still, there was only one way to go, and I had an expert digger to guide me. Eventually, we emerged into the light of a backyard, and the second we were out of the hole, I started to unmorph.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It probably would have been smarter to wait and see if there was anyone there to watch me, but in the moment, I couldn’t bring myself to care about that. We’d actually gotten out. We were alive.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>We were also, I realized as I started to grow into my normal size, and as my eyes adjusted to what I was used to, in Sokka’s backyard. The tunnel hadn’t felt that long...but then again, I hadn’t been sure how long we’d been in there, I was too focused on getting out. Once I felt my mouth and vocal chords finish changing, even as my arms and legs were still tiny furry ferret appendages, I said, my voice surly, “It’s later. Explain.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A few weeks ago, the things in front of me would have given me nightmares. By then, I was fairly sure I’d run out of room in my head for more things to keep me up at night. Sokka’s mouth was the only part of his face that had changed back, the rest of it was still the exoskeleton of a spider-tick. He was his full size, and his arms and legs were back to normal, but they were sticking out of a thorax. “Okay, so, explanation,” Sokka began, clearly stalling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Listen, Drama Queen,” Toph cut in. Her voice sounded raspier than it usually did, but she’d barely unmorphed at that point. Her black hair had grown out, and her claws were mostly back to being hands, but that was it. She was only half her normal size. “I didn’t want to do this in the first place, if you’ll recall.” I remembered just that. “Not like you gave me a choice, though. I’m blind, but I can still tell when you’re having an anxiety attack.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I flinched. “Oh.” We’d never really talked about it out loud before, but it looked like my closest friends knew anyway. I felt...ashamed of myself. Of my weakness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>We were all mostly back to normal, with only small bits here are there left to finish, all of us wearing our tight-fit morphing clothes. For Sokka, that meant a dark blue tank top and the tightest shorts he could find. He wore them confidently, and I tried not to stare. “Zuko, what you did was stupid.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And pigheaded,” Toph threw in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And dangerous,” Katara added, coming into the backyard through the sliding glass door and glaring at me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...and you shouldn’t have done it,” Aang finished with a grin, blushing as he too came out to join us from Sokka’s house. Was there something wrong with their home? Then I realized he was looking at Katara, and it made sense. Even I had noticed his crush.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Coming back around to Sokka, he told me, “We all talked after you stormed off. Toph and I knew you were going to try doing this on your own, so we secretly tagged along. As usual, I had your back, and watched out for you with her feet.” Walking closer to both of them, Toph socked Sokka in the shoulder without looking at him or breaking her stride. “Ow!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I was sure I had one coming as well, but even as I prepared to take it in without complaint, it didn’t come. Instead, Toph slammed her food down on mine, where I wasn’t prepared. “You need to get over yourself, Zuzu.” She knew I hated being called that, but she just kept talking. “When we talked about what to do at your house the day after this all started, who led the discussion? When we raided the Yeerk Pool, who led the way? Who is the one person here that we </span>
  <b>all</b>
  <span> trust with our lives?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a pause as I waited for her to say more, until it dawned on me she wanted </span>
  <em>
    <span>me</span>
  </em>
  <span> to be the one who admitted it. “I am...” But seconds after I said that, I was ready to counter it. “But I can’t lead us! If I do, I’ll get us all killed! I’m...” I reached in my mind for the word. The word I could use to make it clear to them I could never be a good leader. But all the words that came to me...</span>
  <b>Weak. Shameful. Disrespectful.</b>
  <span> They were all coming to me in my father’s voice. He was the one who said that about me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not what? As tough as Toph? As social as Katara? As optimistic as Aang? As brilliant, charming, and handsome as me?” Sokka gestured to each of them in turn, ending on himself. Then, he took a breath, and got serious. “Zuko. You’re not us. You’re you. And you’re the person we want to have our backs, every time. You’re also right. With you leading us, we might all die. But that’s true no matter who’s in charge. If I’m going to die in this fight, it’s going to be as your right-hand man.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Toph scoffed. “You? You think </span>
  <em>
    <span>you’re</span>
  </em>
  <span> his right-hand? I think </span>
  <em>
    <span>someone</span>
  </em>
  <span> is getting a bit delusional.” From there, a small argument started over who was actually my second-in-command, with Katara having Toph’s back, and Aang throwing his own hat into the ring. I didn’t contribute, I just had fun watching it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So, I had to admit it to myself. I was the leader. Period. It felt like something had been set into place, like a switch had been flipped. From that moment on, I had to accept what the reality of this was. I was responsible, not just for myself, but for those four as well. We were fighting a war against a threat we barely understood. It was one we had to win.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the verbal scuffle ended with Sokka proclaiming his victory (just for having convinced Aang to back him up), Zuko cleared his throat. “Okay, I get it. If you guys trust me...I’ll do my best.” They beamed at me, apparently thrilled to see I’d finally given up fighting this. “I learned several pieces of information. First, Jin isn’t a Controller, but her parents are. That’s why she’s been so...not her, lately.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Katara, who barely knew Jin, looked as though someone had slapped her in the face. Angry enough to fight someone. “We have to help her! What if they try to make her into a Controller too?” It was rage born of compassion. Katara was thinking about what Jin’s life must have been like, living with parents who weren’t really there. Considering her and Sokka’s mother passed away a few years ago, and their father wasn’t home much anymore, I could understand why she felt the way she did.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But I shook my head, as much as I wanted to agree. “They don’t seem to </span>
  <em>
    <span>want</span>
  </em>
  <span> to infest her. Even if we did try to help her, what would we do? If her parents realize she knows about the Yeerks, they’ll infest her for sure, or worse. I don’t...I don’t think there’s anything we can do for her, at least not right now.” Katara clearly didn’t like my answer, but to be fair, neither did I. “The Yeerk inside her mother, Sinnon 246, seemed to be of a higher rank. They report directly to someone named Subvisser 8, and above them, they mentioned someone called Visser One.” I didn’t have to connect that to the person we’d seen give the order to kill Gee’atsoh. They put it together. “Apparently, Visser One has commanded all Controllers to ‘dispose of’ any animals in their hosts’ homes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That definitely got their attention. “They know about us?” Aang asked, eyes going wide.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sokka couldn’t resist a smart comment. “Aang, they saw a dragon, a polar bear-dog, a badger mole, and a goat-gorilla attack one of their bases. If they didn’t realize something was wrong with that, I’d be worried about them.” The joke had barely left Sokka’s mouth before he moved onto a more tactical note. “That makes spying on them harder for us, but it might help us figure out which people are Controllers.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I wasn’t sure where he was going with that, until the dots finally connected. “A bunch of people are going to suddenly be kicking their pets out, or even killing them...” I muttered. “If they have people in the right places, they can make that harder to find out...but it’s something.” I didn’t want to pretend this would be a major advantage. The lack of pets to morph would hurt us more than it would help. But if I was the leader, acknowledging silver linings would be important, right?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Raising one thin eyebrow, Toph asked, “Please tell me you heard more than just </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Because if so, I’m starting to regret saving you.” Katara gave her a look for that comment, but Toph couldn’t tell. Then again, if she could have seen it, she probably wouldn’t have cared.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But what Toph said had reminded me, there was one other thing I’d learned. “Subvisser 8...he said something about ‘disciplining’ Sinnon by burning her house down, or setting her host body on fire.” I’d made a note of it at the time, after what I’d been through I couldn’t forget it, but it was only going over it all now that I was realizing something more strange about it. In all of our encounters with Controllers thus far, none of them had bended. We’d started to assume that maybe they just plain </span>
  <em>
    <span>couldn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span>. After all, they were space aliens.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe that doesn’t mean they’re a firebender,” Aang said, looking very proud of the explanation he’d thought of. “Maybe they just meant they’d do it with matches and lighter fluid? It’s not like firebenders are the only people who can set fires.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I couldn’t tell what anyone else thought of his idea, so I weighed in. “That’s definitely possible, Aang, but from the way the Subvisser said it, I thought it implied firebending. It felt like he was bragging about being able to do it. But I could have just been assuming that.” Aang looked glad I’d considered his idea at all, and I felt sad seeing a reminder of how overlooked he was. I’d said all I had to, so I tried to look as leader-ly as I could and told them, “I think we can all go home now, we’ve done enough for today.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I hadn’t expected pushback from that. But Katara suggested everyone stayed over for dinner. Toph and I called our parents to check if that was okay, but while my mom was happy to say it was okay, hers didn’t even answer the phone. Katara ended up making some Southern Water Tribe fried seaweed noodle dish, something I remembered having at their home when I was a kid, prepared by her mom.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>While we all waited for the food to be done, I had to talk to Sokka, “Thanks,” I told him, though the words felt hard to say. “For coming to save me. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you and Toph.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He rolled his eyes at what I’d told him. “You think that’s news? If you didn’t know, being your best friend is our full time job. Also, important tip: never turn into a spider-tick! I had to drink your blood, and it was gross!” He spit, as though he could still taste it even unmorphed. I’ve never tried it, maybe he really could?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ignoring the part about what it was like to be a bug, I had something else to say. “You’re right,” I admitted. “You’re my best friend, Sokka. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” I didn’t tell him things like that often, and this time they were enough to make his cheeks blush and his eyes water. We all had a good time, in defiance of the weight on our shoulders.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I didn’t tell anyone else that I’d recognized the voice of Subvisser 8.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whoever they were, I’d met them. The next time we spoke, I’d be sure of their identity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I wouldn’t have to wait long.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But that’s not my story to tell you. I’ll have to leave that one...to Toph.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Flip book animation in the corner for the last quarter of the book: The fire ferret is joined by a badger-mole poking out through the bottom of the page. They leave through the same hole.</p><p>Next book: The Protection. Toph's the narrator, and we meet Subvisser 8 in the flesh.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Oh man! Second book! Hope anyone who might have enjoyed the first one likes this too, and if you have yet to read the first of this series, "The Crash", check the top for a link!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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